Pure of Blood
by Natasha-Von-Lecter
Summary: Chapter 2 is up! This is my very first Snape story. Here is a look at his troubled childhood, youth & stint as a death eater from the adult Snape's perspective. WIP. Please R&R! Thanks!
1. Chapter 1

My first impression of my mother was one of distance. She was a beautiful creature, proud and cold, with aristocratic features that remained permanently frozen in a mask of indifference. Her silky black hair was always coiled in a thick plate at the nape of her neck. As a child, I was often wary that it might at once spring to life and strike at me with the fangs I imagined hid just out of view. When I tried with childish tears to attract her attention, she cloaked herself with impenetrable silence. I heard her voice so infrequently that when I try to recall it, I am always met with a deaf ringing in my ears. If she ever touched me, I cannot remember the occasion.   
  
My father's touch, however is seared upon my mind. Sharp, quick, and brutal, his hand meted out punishment for all sorts of real and imagined transgressions. When I stained the living room wall with a child's artistic wanderings, I remember my father's hands prying open my mouth and forcing the broken crayon down my throat. The waxy residue stained my milk teeth crimson, and left a queasy taste at the back of my tongue. When my first attempts at potions failed miserably, he broke all ten of my fingers, then healed them with a flick of his wand. And then, he broke all ten again. My joints still ache fiercely when cruelest winter slips in under doorjamb and loose foundation stone. I have potions to dull the physical pain; I dismiss them as the crutch of a weak constitution. Pain has made me who I am. Without it, I might forget myself.   
  
Though my childhood vacillated between the apathetic disinterest of my mother, and the overbearing discipline of my father, I was not entirely without love. Her name was Valeria, and she was the true mother of my youth. She was my nanny, hired on to alleviate my birth mother from the need to interact with the child of her womb. A beautiful woman, young and soft, with auburn hair that I loved to curl my fingers about and hold. Her hands were smooth, and her touch as gentle as a summer breeze. She never once raised a hand to me, even when in my childish clumsiness I brushed against her painful bruises. She merely winced and hugged me all the harder. She loved me as her own child. She loved me as the child she had been denied. She loved me, because she had loved my father.   
  
The house of Snape has a long and proud past, and one of the purest bloodlines to ever grace the wizarding world. Magic runs strong in our veins, but so do less unsavory qualities. There is a cruelty there that can rule a man if he gives it half a chance. My father did, and thus lost himself. He lost the chance for happiness. He lost the chance for love. In the end, he lost even more. But it all started with a woman, and that woman was Valeria. They met in their youth, He a young lordling on a vast and rambling country estate, and she a poor beauty from the village below. The first time he saw her, she was sitting in a field, braiding daises into a crown with a simple spell. He rode up to her on a black charger and flashed her a dashing smile. Perhaps it was love at first site. Perhaps it was only two foolish young people who let their emotions get in the way of better judgment. But whatever transpired between them, it was ill-fated. You see, my father was the only son of a great pure-blood house. And she was a mudblood.   
  
He had talked of marriage, but his parents refused him. A fleeting fancy was no excuse to sully the liquid gold that flowed in his veins. No child of the house of Snape would be such a monstrosity. Valeria, it seemed was not worthy. I do not know the details of what fell out between them. Valeria would never tell me of his rejection, and the years she spent alone in mourning. My grandparents, disheartened by their wayward son, endeavored to find him a suitable match. My mother, with her uncanny Slytherin cunning, calculated the wealth and prestige that accompanied my father's hand in marriage. She would produce an heir of untainted blood, and she would live like a queen. There was no love lost between my parents, but at the very least, they understood themselves. They bred true, to produce me. Pure as my conception might be, mine was an ill-gotten birth. There is something missing in a child gotten without any thought to love. If any part of me is still capable of love, I owe my thanks to Valeria, and her emergence in my life.   
  
When I was still a babe, she came to live with us. My mother preferred to spend her time lost in spell work and absinthe, and requested a caretaker to keep me out of her hair. Why my father chose to bring Valeria I cannot fathom. He must have known it would only end badly. He must have known that he could not control his anger and frustration. I can only assume that he knew - and did not care. It is possible, that he had never truly given her up, but continued to see her secretly in the village below our manor. If my mother knew she was his mistress, I don't believe the notion troubled her. But my father brought her into our house and kept her. He loved her in the most shameful and cowardly ways imaginable. Beneath the noses of his family and friends. And when he realized the cruelty and weakness of his actions, he punished her for being a filthy little mudblood. And so it continued. A kiss one moment, a slap the next. After all, she had made him love her when she was not worthy of him. His unhappiness was all her fault. If she had been of pureblood, they might have been happy. The pathetic lies he fed himself were poison in the wound. He festered like a mad dog.   
  
We shared our little pains, Valeria and I. I would lie beside her after my father had savaged her, and put my small hands on her cheek. She would smile through her tears and sing me lullabies. She was not a skilled witch, but she would practice little healing charms to knit the cuts and bruises my father visited upon me. I endeavored to mix her elixirs to heal and comfort, but when her marks faded quickly, my father was only more vicious with her. I have often thought on why she stayed with the family as long as she did, that first time. Perhaps, because she knew she could never just "leave". My father would hunt her down and bring her back, no doubt. It would not be so simple as just giving notice. But deep down in my heart, I know why she had not attempted to escape. She stayed because she loved me, and she couldn't bear to leave me alone in that cold, heartless home. She paid for my safety with all her pain and suffering. I think, truly, that I owe her my life. The day I left for my first year at Hogwarts, she took me to the train station, tucked a handkerchief she had embroidered with my name into my pocket, and kissed me goodbye. The first letter from my father that I received by owl informed me that Valeria had never returned home. I hoped she had found a good place to hide. 


	2. Chapter 2

I've often heard the rumor whispered behind my back that during my first year at Hogwart's I knew more curses and hexes than any student before or since. If it is true, I owe nothing to careful hours of study and practice. I knew them – each and every one of them – because they had already been used on me. Perhaps, it is an advantage, as you wave that slender wand, to know what pain and humiliation is inflicted on your enemies. I think the burden of the knowledge has made me cautious. I know it has made my magic more effective in not only the dark arts, but in defense against them. I have lived on both sides, and found both wanting. Neither one could save Valeria. Neither one could truly save me. There is no true return from the darkness, only the appropriation of a little bit of stolen light. If black and white have dueled over my soul, it is only to leave me bleeding in shades of grey.   
  
My youth at Hogwart's progressed as slowly as my years at home. I was small, bookish, and uncoordinated, and as such, a perfect target. There was humiliation enough in those games, but very rarely the type of pain I had grown accustomed to at home. I bore it as stoically as I was able. If I occasionally fought back against their attacks, I can assure you, it was never with the full strength of my ability. I did, however, acquire an unobtrusive protector who looked after me during my education. His name was Albus Dumbledore, and I think at first he pitied me. He knew my father, of course, as a generous benefactor of the school. There were three classrooms named in honor of the house of Snape at that time; I had them all changed when I became the last heir of that once great house. But Dumbledore soon learned that his pity was neither wanted nor required. Ugly thing, pity. It serves only to further disgrace the object of pity, and perpetuate the cycle of disdain. As much as I may hate to admit it, I am nothing, if not proud. I remember Dumbledore catching site of a scar upon my left wrist. My father had slit to the vein and held it open with his fingers while I bled out. I think he had been trying to scare me; instead he nearly killed me. But he was truly handy with that healing wand of his. Of course he was, when he was given so many chances to practice on my mangled flesh. Dumbledore had offered me a potion to fade the scare in a matter of weeks. I think we finally understood each other when I told him that I'd no sooner lose my scars than I would lose my limbs. They were, after all, a part of me.   
  
My parents wrote to me seldom, and visited even less. When a letter did come my chest would seize as I quickly skimmed the text for mention of Valeria. Each time when I learned that she was still missing, I felt a wave of relief flow over me. I could lay aside any guilt that I felt for leaving and going off to Hogwart's. She was safe, still, and I was out from under my father's brutal hands. But time never stands completely still, and I knew that soon I'd have to return to my ancestral home. I watched the days fall away with an increasing sensation of dread.   
  
When a social engagement brought my parents close to the school, they felt the only proprietary thing to do was plan a visit. I was called into Dumbledore's office, and gave my parents a stiff bow. I still don't know how he managed it, but Dumbledore was sly as a fox even then. Most likely he catered to my parents pride, and made me seem a grand student and a credit to the school. Perhaps he even called in an old favor or debt. All I know is that when my parents spoke to me, it was to tell me I'd be spending the summer at Hogwart's as Dumbledore's personal assistant. He had fed them some rubbish about a particularly delicate potion, and his need for young eyes and steady hands. To this day he maintains that he truly needed the help, but I've always known otherwise. He kept me safe that year, and the next, and again the next. We grew to be a very efficient team, able to understand each other's gestures and moods at first glance. I was not a carefree and jovial student, like so many that he loved at Hogwart's but I was diligent and hardworking. He understood there was a darkness ingrained in me through breeding and rearing that rendered me incapable of the light-hearted ways of so many popular schoolboys. He watched me rather like a falconer watches his falcon; a fierce and noble creature who, while they might never be loved, might one day be thoroughly trusted. It is to his credit that he chose me not because he enjoyed my company, but because he knew I needed refuge from my life. If I have never given voice to my gratitude, I have shown it to him in a thousand ways.   
  
I learned, I progressed, and my magic grew stronger. My fourth year, I did return home briefly, but was able to commence with assisting Dumbledore before the week was out. My mother had died and I had to attend her funeral. How she died, I was never quite certain. I remember something about her neck being snapped, but if it was from a fall, or my father's hands I cannot tell you. She wandered around in an absinthe haze so often, that either explanation seems entirely plausible. She was buried in an ebony coffin with the Snape family crest emblemized on the lid. I cast a simple but effective charm to produce the expected tears. All the while, I scanned the attendees for a hint of Valeria, but found none. Wherever she had run to ground, she had hidden well, and I was glad for it. The night I spent in my childhood room, I slept fitfully. My father entertained a large group of men in one of the banquet rooms, and from the upper floor I would hear occasional hushed references to a magnificent wizard that would purge the mudbloods from their midst. When I finally drifted into slumber, I dreamt of broken fingers, of cuts, and bruises. I was never more happy to leave that place the next morning.   
  
My fifth year was fairly uneventful, expect for a Qudditch match injury that left me with a minor concussion curtsey of one Sirius Black. Likewise, I divided my sixth year between my accelerated studies, and the warm familiarity of Dumbledore's office. I think in his heart of hearts he had hoped to be a father figure to me; I could never relegate him to such a hateful position. Instead we settled into the rarest of all relationships: Mutual respect. But my last year at Hogwart's, and the year that followed would test that bond, and push it to the limits of its endurance. The darkness in me had been pacified by Dumbledore's gentle guidance. When it threatened to flare up at a classmate's slight, or cruel word, his hand on my back calmed me and brought me back to myself. He had thought to redeem me, and perhaps, had I been left to his teaching and counsel, I never would have come to know my dark side so keenly. But hate can be nurtured even more easily than love, and the seeds of discord lay dormant in my heart until they could be properly cultivated and grown. For a time, they would threaten to choke of the tender samplings of love that Valeria had planted and Dumbledore tended. They would have succeeded too, I think, if Dumbledore hadn't been there to pull me back from the brink on that fateful night. Funny how waging war against the Death Eaters almost turned my heart as black as theirs. I'd laugh if I remembered how. 


End file.
